BINGEING ON THE END TIMES
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 4, 2023 – Jesus rarely taught about end-times prophecies. He mentioned them on occasion, and three of the four gospels devote a chapter to them, but they weren’t his focus. More important to Jesus was that his followers understand the necessity of having a strong faith foundation (building on rock rather than sand) and of being born-again. Everything else would flow from that.
Contrast Jesus with today’s self-professed prophets, whose entire ministries revolve around end-times prophecies. This is a red flag of spiritual danger right there, as such prophecies tend to lead Christians away from the basics of having a strong faith foundation and being born-again. They instead stress “visions” and prepping and private revelations, so that being a Christian is no longer about loving your enemies, but about hoarding food and guns and ammo that you have no intention of sharing with your neighbours, let alone your enemies.
Focusing on end-times prophecies is spiritually unhealthy. Perpetually and breathlessly rehashing John’s book of Revelation to see if this or that world event aligns with this or that prophesied sign is little more than a Bible game based on current events if the inspiration doesn’t come from God’s Holy Spirit. Jesus tells us to “watch” for signs, not to binge watch.
Ultimately, fixating on the mark of the beast or the identity of the anti-Christ becomes fear- and ego-driven spiritual porn that has nothing to do with Jesus’ teachings or God’s Kingdom and everything to do with pride and caving to the devil’s seductions.
We need to be very, very careful when we approach the topic of end-times prophecies, especially prophecies based on John’s Revelation. We need to let God lead us by his Spirit, not allow ourselves to be led by random YouTube prophets whose sole purpose appears to be riling up their viewers for clicks, likes, and donations. Elijah, Jeremiah, and other prophets dealt with the same issues during their time on Earth. False prophets are not a new phenomenon, and neither is their focus on end-times prophecies. The only thing that’s new about this latest batch of false prophets is their high-tech method of delivering their lies.
But why are people so drawn to the topic of the end times? For some people, it’s curiosity; they simply want to know what may be coming down the pipeline. For others, there’s an element of escapism in fixating on eschatology (anything to do with the end times) that gives them the feeling they don’t have to deal with issues at hand (since those issues are going to be meaningless once the bombs start dropping, right?). These people use end-times signs as an excuse not to live in the present and deal with their problems. Then there are those who believe that Jesus is coming back soon to set up a worldly kingdom, and they’re rightly looking forward to such a time, if only they weren’t so wrong about Jesus doing that.
Jesus tells us that we should pray to God to take us away before the final cataclysms begin. Why would he tell us to pray to God to take us away if he’s coming back to set up a kingdom? Wouldn’t he instead have told us us to find a nice little hidey-hole to hunker down in and wile away the time until his return? But that’s not what he says; he says we should pray to God to take us Home before the storm begins.
I am not a specialist in eschatology and I don’t focus on it. Still, I’m relatively knowledgeable about it simply by being a follower of Jesus who reads God’s Word daily. I have a believer’s knowledge of the end times. My understanding is based not only on the book of Revelation and chapters in the gospels, but on other books in the Bible, including Daniel, Isaiah, and some of the so-called minor prophets. They all speak of a time when the world will undergo simultaneous cataclysms across every sphere (geological, economic, physical, social, spiritual, etc.) that will be so horrendous, nothing and no-one will survive. It will be a mass extinction event from which there will be no coming back. It will be the end of the world not only as we know it, but the end of the world altogether.
For a Christian, this is a not something that you should pray to happen soon. For a Christian, the focus should be on following Jesus’ example of teaching about God’s Kingdom and doing whatever is necessary to bring people to “repent and believe the Gospel”. Christians should not be praying for the worst of the worst to happen on the off chance that Jesus may be dropping by at the same time.
If you find yourself unduly attracted to end-times prophecies and those who are pushing them, especially on social media, maybe now’s a good time to remind yourself that Jesus didn’t focus on end-times prophecies and didn’t spend much of his ministry teaching about them. It was more important to him that we live our lives day by day by day as he instructed that we do, that we make godly choices, and that we unfailingly treat others as we would want to be treated, including our enemies. These teachings might not have the same thrill and attraction as speculating who the anti-Christ might be or whether we’ve entered the tribulation years, but they are critically important to our eternal soul.
That we learn to love our enemies under every circumstance and temptation is the meat and veggies of our spiritual education, whereas figuring out end-times prophecies is more like dessert. And we all know what happens to our body if our diet consists mostly of dessert.
“Let them eat cake” was never intended as nutritional advice.
ITCHING FOR A JIM JONES-STYLE REVIVAL: A WORD ON CHRISTIANS AND SUICIDE
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 4, 2023 – Someone sent me a YouTube video yesterday featuring a pastor telling his flock it’s OK to commit suicide as long as you have faith in Jesus, because faith in Jesus is all you need to get into Heaven. It was cartoon video, and I thought at first it was a parody of Jim Jones, the guy who counselled his followers to kill themselves by drinking a Kool-Aid-like concoction laced with cyanide. But no, the video wasn’t a parody. The pastor was teaching his flock that God is fine with them killing themselves.
But here’s what God actually has to say about Christians and suicide.
First of all, Jesus tells us not to judge, which in this case would mean not to say whether someone who commits suicide will or won’t get into Heaven. A soul’s final destination is determined by God, not by man, and certainly not by doctrines of men. To say that all those who have “faith in Jesus” automatically have a ticket to Heaven is a form of judging. It’s as much judging to claim that someone will get into Heaven as to say someone won’t. Both claims are judging, and we’ve been warned not to do that.
At the same time, Jesus also taught us that, at the Judgement, we’ll be held accountable for everything we do and say during our time on Earth, and Paul tells us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. These lines from scripture don’t in any way indicate that anyone has an automatic ticket to Heaven, no matter how strong their faith in Jesus.
In any case, how can people claim to have faith in Jesus and at the same time want to kill themselves? The two positions – faith in Jesus and suicidal intentions – cancel each other out. If we have faith in Jesus, we’ll want to be like Jesus, and Jesus was in no way suicidal.
The pastor on what I now think of as the “Jim Jones video” also trotted out Paul’s statement that we’re saved by grace, not by works. However, what the pastor didn’t mention was that the works Paul was contrasting to grace in that particular verse were the works of the law (the 600+ statutes and ordinances given to the children of Israel by Moses), not the 600+ choices we make every day with our free will. Jesus and Paul and others throughout the Bible are abundantly clear that our works (that is, everything we choose to say and everything we choose to do, including the thoughts we choose to think) are being monitored and recorded in the spiritual realm. We’ll be held accountable for those at the Judgement.
It’s also worth noting that the pastor didn’t define grace. Had he defined grace, it would have upended his argument about suicidal people getting into Heaven, which I guess is why he chose not to define it. Grace is the state of living with God’s Holy Spirit with you 24/7. It is a gift that God confers through conversion. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross reconciled us to God not by default but only if we willfully submit to God like little children, repent, and are genuinely converted. Again, first comes the willful submission and repentance, then comes the conversion, and then comes God’s Holy Spirit into our soul.
When we’re converted, Jesus and God come to live with us through the Holy Spirit. This is the state of living in grace. But after conversion we still have free will and so still need to make godly and righteous choices for the rest of our time on Earth or we’ll push God and Jesus out of our soul. Grace can be lost, as the fallen entities well know and as Jesus warned us in the parable of the man who was “swept clean” and then later became so full of evil that his end was worse than his beginning. Anyone who claims that grace cannot be lost is dead wrong. God and Jesus cannot live in a soul where sin has command, and the potential for sin to have command in a soul persists (due to free will) as long as that soul, whether converted or not, remains on Earth.
Furthermore, and this needs to be said loud and clear – someone who contemplates committing suicide is not by definition a Christian. The definition of a Christian is someone who is born-again and so lives under God’s grace and has the companionship and guidance of God and Jesus 24/7. Entertaining (that is mulling over) the possibility of suicide is A BIG RED FLAG that the soul is not under grace. Such a soul urgently needs to submit to God, repent, and be converted. No genuine born-again follower of Jesus would under any circumstance entertain thoughts of suicide (including assisted suicide), let alone actually do it.
As I mentioned, a genuine Christian has God and Jesus with him or her 24/7. When you have the constant presence of God and Jesus with you, contemplating suicide never comes to mind, or if it does, it’s knocked back so fast, your head spins. Any problems you encounter, you take them immediately to God and Jesus and they help you work them out. That’s God’s promise to you and that’s their job. As a born-again believer for over 23 years, I can vouch for this. Before I was born-again, I constantly thought about killing myself, but since my rebirth, I have never again thought about suicide.
Most people contemplate suicide as a way out of their spiritual (emotional) pain. Spiritual pain is a sign that a soul is in sin. Souls that are in sin cannot get into Heaven, not because God is keeping them out, but because their sin, as evidenced by their spiritual pain, is keeping them out. Scripture reminds us over and over that it is sin that separates a soul from God. That is a basic spiritual fact.
Again, we’re not to judge – God is the judge – but God’s given us enough rules and examples in his Word, along with a Spirit of Truth and wisdom and understanding, that we can easily discern right from wrong. Any pastor who teaches that it’s OK for a Christian to commit suicide because “once saved, always saved” and that it’s all about “faith in Jesus” rather than our relationship with God and what we choose to think, say, and do during our time on Earth – well, such a pastor will find out the hard way, I guess, what happens to you when you teach lies. “It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
To sum up, Jesus tells us not to judge, which means not to claim that this or that particular soul will or won’t go to Heaven. God is the Judge. Also, there’s no such thing as a suicidal Christian. People who are contemplating committing suicide are in a state of sin. They need to get right with God and then they’ll actually become Christians and live under God’s protective and healing state of grace. Under grace, all thoughts of suicide automatically stop, including thoughts of assisted suicide. Those thoughts will not come back as long as that person remains under grace.
Jesus invited us to drink the water of life, not the dregs of death, and definitely not the Kool-Aid.
__________
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine;
but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
2 Timothy 4:3-4
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 